Have you ever mountain biked nude? I have.

I was pretty excited about riding the Mt. Dora mountain bike trails yesterday. We’ve seen a good amount of rainfall over the past couple of days, and I figured the sugar sand would be nice and packed down. Because I expected the trails would be running faster than they have in several months, my plan was to attack a couple of segments for time.

The trails were in great shape, and running fast! There was, however, quite a bit of debris from the heavy wind and rain, so on the first couple of laps I took the time to stop and clear the path of fallen branches.

I was feeling good after my warm-up laps, and I decided to make a KOM (King Of the Mountain) run at the Gravity Destroyer up/down and Florida Flow Loop segment. I once had KOM on this segment, but I’m presently in 3rd place on the leaderboard. I’ve become much faster since I rode my current best time on this segment back in early September, so with the favorable trail conditions I knew the crown was as good as mine…

As I rode I could tell that I was ahead of record pace: not only were the trails running fast, I was riding well. After many weeks of dealing with loose sugar sand, it felt great to rail corners with confidence again!

I took this picture right after I made it back to my truck.

About three quarters through the segment I was doing ~15 MPH when a large tree branch came crashing down across the trail directly in front of me! I slammed on my brakes, but there was not nearly enough time to stop: my bike hit the tree and I went flying over the bars. My body scraped the tree as I flew through the air, and when I landed on the ground something felt weird.

I looked down and could not believe what I saw: the lower half of my bib shorts were completely ripped open.

For those of you who are not aware, nothing is worn underneath bib shorts. The shorts have a built-in padded chamois in the butt area, but up front there’s nothing between you and the world but a very thin and lightweight piece of Lycra.

So I stood up. My junk was completely exposed, but my first thought was how pissed I was that my KOM attempt was ruined. After a second or two I realized I had, um… bigger problems. I tried tucking everything back into the side of the shorts that was not ripped, but as soon as I moved all my bits and pieces came spilling back out.

The reality of the situation was sinking in: I was about a mile from the parking lot, and I had absolutely no means of covering myself.

Bib shorts with complimentary air conditioning.

There was really nothing much I could do but hop back onto my bike and ride it out. At first I tried riding with one hand on the bars and the other over my manhood, but after a minute of that I said, “Aw, screw it!” and just rode normally.

When I got to the bottom of the Gravity Destroyer climb (which leads up to the parking lot) I thought, “Ah, what the hell!”, and decided to go for a new KOM on that segment (I was currently 2nd overall).

There is quite a bit of time spent out of the saddle on this climb, and every time I stood up… well, you can picture the scene. I can’t even imagine what someone coming down the trail from the other direction would have thought. I probably would have cheerfully said something blithe, such as “Beautiful morning, yeah?!”

Anyway, as I closed in on the end of the segment my frame-mounted bike pump caught a branch and popped off. Grrr. Oh well, I can think of a couple of other things that would have been far worse to catch on a branch yesterday! I reached down and grabbed it (the pump, pervert) as fast as I could, and carried it in my hand the rest of the way. That incident cost me about 5 seconds, so I was surprised when I saw that I still tied for the KOM! With a clean run I should be able to improve my time by at least 5 seconds.

The mountain bike parking lot is shared with people who use the dog park. Of course there were about a half-dozen people enjoying the park with their dogs as I emerged from the woods. I must have been quite a sight as I awkwardly hobbled over to my truck sweating, bleeding and holding my hand over my crotch.

Well, that was not exactly how I planned for yesterday’s ride to go! At least I didn’t wind up in the ER… or jail. 🙂

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